As a composer, conductor, ensemble founder, teacher and supporter, Friedrich Cerha embodies a pioneering spirit and has opened doors and brought the unknown into local concert halls. His friends and companions congratulate him on his birthday with very personal statements.

London’s Wigmore Hall celebrates the imminent ninetieth birthday of Friedrich Cerha with a day devoted to the composer’s works.

On 10 October Friedrich Cerha Day presents a major retrospective of the composer’s chamber works performed by close colleagues and musicians steeped in his multi-faceted art. Among the performers will be the Boulanger Trio, who you can see together with the composer pictured above.

For me, the organ music by Friedrich Cerha and Johann Sebastian Bach is congenial. They are characterized by timeless features such as clarity, vitality, thinking in counterpoint, the economy of the compositional means and a pronounced sense of proportions. (Wolfgang Kogert)

On 18 April Wolfgang Kogert, organist of the Wiener Hofburgkapelle, presents his brand new recording “B-A-Cer-Ha” at the RadioKulturhaus in Vienna.

On the CD, Kogert juxtaposes Cerha’s Neun Inventionen and Neun Präludien with pieces by Bach.

A live stream of the evening from the RadioKulturhaus will be available on 18 April at 19:30. Listen live.

Together with HK Gruber, Hans Kann, H. C. Artmann, Gerhard Rühm, Fritz Wotruba and many others, Friedrich Cerha was a frequent guest at the Viennese Strohkoffer [straw case]. In 1987, he finished the 60 miniatures of Eine Art Chansons, most of which are based on texts by members of the Viennese Group.

Agnes Heginger and Studio Dan will present a selection of Friedrich Cerha’s Eine Art Chansons at the Sargfabrik in Vienna on 14 December. After having been encouraged by the composer to record the pieces, this will be a preview of their upcoming CD.

The concert starts at 20:00 and will be broadcast by SWR2, listen live.

Cerha on Nacht:

“Composers are expected to operate as men of literature. They are supposed to write introductions to their works, author essays, give lectures. That means there are then musical elements in the foreground which are well presentable using linguistic means, or else – which is more often the case – ideologically and fashionably coloured aspects which are not necessarily crucially germane to the work concerned. Therefore scepticism could indeed be appropriate when considering what composers write; in reality, they are considered an authority in an area in which they are in fact dilettantes.”

In the programme, Gilbert introduces the Paraphrase as “highly atmospheric […] [It] sets up kind of a wonderful stepping-stone from which you can enter the world of Beethoven 9. To me it sort of opens the world of possibility […] it lets the Beethoven really stand on its own.”

The composer on Paraphrase: “I hope very much that the gap between my Paraphrase and Beethoven’s work will not be perceived as an irreconcilable divide between two foreign elements, but that the pieces can instead be experienced as two related elements.”

I have always been a curious person, and have always reflected on my own work. When a composition was finished, I wanted to find out exactly what had happened in it. This made me open to new influences. (Friedrich Cerha)

Watch arte’s and the hr-Sinfonieorchester’s video stream of the orchestra’s concert on 7 February 2014 at the Alte Oper Frankfurt:

On the programme were the world première of Friedrich Cerha’sTagebuchand performances of Haydn’s Symphony No. 59, Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. The concert was performed by Arabella Steinbacher and the hr-Sinfonieorchester (cond. Andrés Orozco-Estrada).